The Bourbon Democrats managed to win control of the Democratic nomination many times before Roosevelt's 1932 nomination, and they were the dominant faction of the Democrats before the Populists merged with them in 1896. The Bourbon Democrats had a bad habit of losing elections. Some people claim that they only lost 1876 and 1888 because of Republican corruption, but that view overlooks the fact that at the same time, the Democrats prevented black people from voting Republican, and had the elections been racially fair the Republicans could have won without stealing.

The Bourbon Democrats did not have much sense of loyalty to the Democratic Party, and when people won the nomination who were too liberal for the Bourbon Democrats, they would break away and make a third party ticket.

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan and the Populists took over the Democratic Party. They beat the Bourbon Democrats, because they had more supporters than a few rich businessmen. The Populists, and later Progressive Democrats, dominated the Democratic Party after that. When FDR came, he brought the New Deal, and Democrats who did not support it were mostly defeated, except for the Dixiecrats in the South.